The Horrie and Belinda Show

13/2/06

After racing 14km yesterday, we decided to back up and do a light 7.5km recovery run. It was a slow and steady run and it achieved the objective of getting Belinda's legs turning over again.

14/2/06

Celebrated Valentine's Day with 6 x hill reps up and down Torrington Rd. Sandwiched by the 1km warmup and warmdown from Maroubra Beach. It was Belinda's best session since starting these. She ran them very consistently and solidly. She is starting to show signs that the consistency in her training is making her a stronger runner.

15/2/06

We had to add around 700 metres to our planned midweek long run of 14km due to a section of the road we run along being blocked off due to power lines being in danger of coming down. The plan was to run this at a solid pace and hold it right through to the end. We were happy that this was achieved with the pace increasing towards the end. It left us with a great feeling for the rest of the day.

16/2/06

We headed out on our 10.5km loop for a run at a steady pace. Ran it at the planned pace and had us ready for our final assault on the 6 Foot Track the next day.

17/2/06

We headed out early for a drive to Jenolan Caves for Belinda's chance to run the only part of the track she hadn't seen. The section beyond Pluvio was the holy grail.

We headed up the path leading up from Jenolan Caves on our way to Pluvio and back. As this is quite a tough uphill stretch, we walked pretty much all the way up to the top of Mt George Fire Trail. We then started to click into a trot and were on our way. My first navigation error saw us missing the turn to take us past Binda Cabins so we ran an extra km until we hit a dead end at Caves Rd. Headed back and after seeing the sign we missed, were on our way again. We made steady progress towards the Caves Rd crossing. We then headed through the Deviation and I was reminded how tough this little section is. Then came my second and bigger navigational error. This time missing the turnoff to the Black Range. This saw us adding an hour onto our run when we found ourselves back at the Black Range Camping Ground. So what was originally a 38km run to Pluvio and return had now turned into a 45-48km run. Then to make matters worse, after eating a honey sandwich at the 2 hour mark, Belinda was unable to stomach sports drink. As we only had 1200 ml of water to go with our 5.8l of diluted sports drink, Belinda was being very conservative with the water throughout our run. This led to Belinda getting dehydrated and slowed us down until her body had enough as we were heading through the Deviation on the return leg. The plan was to walk/shuffle from the Caves Rd crossing back to Jenolan Caves. However this led to us walking very slowly from just before Binda cabins back. Then when we were heading down the steep rocky bit, Belinda was starting to feel quite nauseous and it became a real struggle to get back to Caves House. We finally managed to get back, 8 hours after we started. It wasn't the experience we were hoping for but 8 hours on your feet can't be underestimated. Now that Belinda has seen the entire course and had an experience with poor fuel/hydration before hand, it will enable a more detailed race plan that will hopefully see her finish in under 7 hours on March 11.